The Amazing SEO Benefit of Blogging as a Marketing Method for 2017
If I have build a website for you, you have heard me say that blogging is the best marketing method you can do to start getting noticed by Google, and get more traffic to your website. This is especially true when you have a brand new website, but is still helpful if your website is older but you've just started blogging.
In a recent blog of his own, Neil Patel noted that "websites with blogs get an average of 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links." When you already have a blog set up on your Wix website, it doesn't cost a penny more to blog as often as you can, but the pay-offs can be substantial.
Bloggers Draw Clients More Easily
Hubspot measures one tangible benefit: 82% of daily bloggers get customers from their blog posts. Now that stat likely refers mostly to retail businesses, but it is a useful reference point for service providers as well.
With a consistently written blog that is well promoted, you are establishing a following of potential clients who are learning to view you as a trusted professional and helpful resource. In marketing terms, this is known as "warm fruit", or people who will be more inclined to think of you and want services from you when they have the need. Obviously, it is much easier to market to warm fruit than to the cold general public audience who has never heard of you.
I know my clients don't, won't and can't blog daily. I don't even blog daily, or weekly myself. But it's good to aim for posting a blog at least every other week.
Here are three blogs about blogging that I've posted in past years to help get psychotherapists, healers, and intuitives into the blogging groove:
Blog Posts Make Great Social Media Links
Social media is here to stay, and becoming a valuable marketing tool when used well. What I mean by "well" is -- used to further your professional reputation as a knowledgeable professional. One way to do that is to incorporate into your blogging habit putting a promotional post on Facebook and LinkedIn with a link back to the blog.
This widens the audience of who sees the blog and brings more people back to your website. And since Google loves to see traffic from high volume sites like social media coming into your website, this gives a boost to your SEO.
A promotional post, by the way, is simply a sentence or question that is meant to pique the interest of those who see your social media post, and leads them to want to read more. So every promotional post would be specific to the unique blog you have just written. A generic invitation to visit your blog won't do. The promotional sentence needs to connect with an emotional need or create a compelling interest.
And here's a tip -- if you have old blogs of timeless content that you haven't promoted on social media before, do so now. That's a way to encourage traffic to your website without actually writing anything new except that one sentence promotional pitch. (I will be doing that with a lot of my older posts in 2017. Join me. )
Send Blogmail to Increase Your Audience
Contrary to some rumors, the ezine -- or as I call mine, blogmail -- is still alive and well. That is, the ones that provide high value to recipients and are perceived as "keepers" are still very much appreciated.
Blogs, social media, and ezines tend to attract different readers. Those who want your emails may not be big social media fans. Others who would like your content delivered to them are often unlikely to seek out your website on their own. Those who do get your info in multiple channels will self-select which they prefer if you are consistently providing useful and meaningful content.
These days there are several ways to send blogmail. One way is to simply copy your published blog content and paste into your blast email provider such as Constant Contact, Aweber, MailChimp, or Wix's own ShoutOut. Another is to set up an RSS feed to blog subscribers -- a relatively new feature offered by Wix. Because I've been using Constant Contact before becoming a Wix pro designer, I stick with them.
Watch for my blog post on email marketing for 2017 soon.
Blogs Can Be Repurposed for Secondary Benefits
Once you have enough blog posts on a particular topic -- whether that's on depression, probiotics, energy healing, or psychic skills -- you can collect all those posts and package them together into an ebook to sell or give away. Although this takes some editing and formatting work, it's much easier than writing a whole new information product from scratch.
If you need more ideas about blogging topics, and blog writing, check out my own little guide, available on request at the top of my main blog page. Or email me to schedule a tele-consult about blogging.
